Whatever Happened to Michael Skelly?

He won The World Cup of Failure!

He's also "Out of the Game."
"Exhibiting new regrets."
Unable to "win the World Cup of transmission."
"Not in the mood."
and he's also
"Still high."

I see.

Don't you just wish this guy would go away?  That's probably what the energy industry thinks, too... retire, go spend your millions, take a bike ride, Mikey old boy.

RTO Insider found Skelly still trying to be relevant and trade on some former glory at AWEA's government cadger convention.

Skelly claims to be "happy."  This is what happy looks like.  Go see.

And Skelly is still serving up the senseless blather.  Trying to sound important.  Trying to sound cool.  Trying to sound smarter than everyone else in the room.  And, of course, he fails again.  Let's consider this gem:

“There’s a huge supply chain of service folks that really know how to do these things, and that will help us to be more flexible,” Skelly said. “There’s a bunch of states now that want 100% renewable energy. I think we’re on a great path, and for the younger folks just getting started in the industry, it’s going to be interesting.”

Service folks?  Are we talking about the folks who clean Skelly's pool, grease his bicycle chain, and scrub the Firehouse toilets?  Or are we talking about active duty military and military veterans, a favorite target of Skelly's former eminent domain threats?  Or are we talking about state public service commissions, who rarely serve the public, using a little bit of truthful shorthand -- service folks for the industry?  Does this even make any sense, any sense at all?

A "supply chain" of folks?  As in folks are meant to be used up and disposed of?  That right there tells you all you need to know about Michael Skelly.

"Really know how to do these things?"  What?  Is Skelly implying that he really does NOT know how to do these things?  What things are we talking about?  Humility?  Empathy?  Grace?  Thinking up stupid ideas and then spending $200M of other people's money trying to make them happen, long after a sane person using his own money would have withdrawn?

This whole quote makes little sense.  But you're supposed to think it does, and that it's sheer genius... such genius that you just don't get it because you're stupid.    LOL  Who's stupid now, Michael Skelly?

Here's another Skellyism:

“We thought transmission was going to be the linchpin of expanding wind energy,” Skelly said.

“Transmission is super hard. We’re not really in the mood right now to do these giant projects in the United States,” Skelly said. “These things change. We’ll look back in 100 years. There’ll be times we didn’t do a lot of infrastructure; there are times we did a lot of infrastructure. Hopefully, the country will be in a better mood and ready to do these big-bone transmission projects.”

Michael Skelly thought wrong.  And it cost 10 years and $200M.  Maybe someone who didn't think he was Don Quixote would have quit at $100M, or even $50M.  The writing was on the wall much, much sooner, but Skelly pretended not to see it.

Transmission is only hard because "cleaner" or "cheaper" electricity for people who already have reliable power is not compatible with overhead transmission on new rights-of-way using eminent domain.  The ones who find a way to transmit electricity without landowner sacrifice won't find it hard at all.

This statement is nothing more than a bunch of malarkey Skelly uses to excuse away his failure.  But it's still there.  Innovators are using Skelly's failure as a guide for what not to do.

It's not because we weren't "in the mood."  It's not because infrastructure wasn't being built.  It's because Skelly had a half-baked idea that landowners would welcome a transmission line for "clean energy" across their land.  They didn't.  Not only that, but there were no customers that wanted what Skelly was selling.  No big utilities wanted to pay someone else for transmission capacity when they could build and own a profitable transmission line themselves.  These are the lessons of Skelly's failure.

Skelly likes to pretend there was nothing wrong with his business plan.

Coincidentally, Pattern Energy CEO Michael Garland sat at the other end of the panel. Pattern last year bought Clean Line’s interests in the Mesa Canyons Wind Farm and Western Spirit Clean Line projects in New Mexico. It has already reached a $285 million agreement with PNM Resources to sell Western Spirit once it’s completed in 2021.

“They’ve pushed forward with development,” Skelly said of Pattern. “Clearly it’s a new model, and that’s exciting.”

It's the same old model.  Pattern is just doing it better.  Smarter.  However, they're still a long way from success.  Hopefully they'll quit when it becomes too expensive.  Now that all Skelly's pet projects are in the hands of corporations, failure will come sooner and cheaper.  Corporations don't eat a great, big bowl of Ego Flakes every morning.  It's about dollars and sense, not ego.

So, there you have it, folks!  This is all you get in exchange for years of heartache, sleepless nights, and hundreds of thousands of your hard earned dollars spent fighting off Michael Skelly's ego.

Another inept Skelly sports analogy:  The World Cup of Failure.  Laughing feels good, right?